SEVEN UNFORGETTABLE SHOWS

We are proud to announce our 2026 Season: The Land of The Free.

FROM OUR Executive ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Dear Friends,

It is a sobering irony that as the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, we are witnessing a continued erosion of personal and civic freedom in the nation that calls itself “The Land of the Free.”

In response, and in protest, we announce our 2026 Season: The Land of the Free, a seven-show journey exploring freedom from many angles: political, personal, collective, spiritual, and theatrical.

Inspired by Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom, this season asks not only what we are free from, but what we are free to become.

Snyder reminds us that liberation and independence are only steps toward freedom, not its fulfillment. To be truly free, we need care, repair, love, and interdependence. Freedom from is never enough. Freedom to flourish requires one another. Theater, as an art form, is a dense and living exploration of that interdependence.

Theater is an expression of freedom.

Our season began in February with The Mountaintop by Katori Hall, which imagines the final night of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life. Facing a mortality he cannot escape, King wrestles with fear, faith, and the unfinished march toward freedom in a disillusioned nation.

In March, Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins confronts freedom distorted and denied. This dark, razor-sharp musical explores how a nation that confuses freedom with license, grievance with entitlement, and independence as the end goal can turn the pursuit of freedom into isolation. As isolation turns into violence, a country founded on freedom can begin to undo itself in its name.

In May, Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba examines what happens when freedom, especially women’s freedom, is brutally suppressed. Written on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, the play reveals how the promise of protection curdles into authoritarian control, how freedom from fear becomes a regime of fear itself, and how the simple freedom to love can provoke violence. As desire is contained, it becomes explosive.

In June, Taylor Mac’s The Fre, a queer, all-ages play set in a mud pit, plunges into tribalism, class anxiety, and the divide between intellectual elitism and populist belonging. Wildly theatrical and deeply participatory, The Fre asks whether freedom means cutting ties, crossing divides, or risking the mess of staying.

In August, Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending explores how communities turn on individuals whose free expression threatens a rigid moral order. When freedom arrives as a beautiful provocation, the response is often fear, silence, and punishment.

In October, we present King Lear by William Shakespeare. As bonds fracture and order collapses, the play asks where our common humanity survives. In this world, the Fool is wise, he who thinks he is not a fool is the greatest fool of all, and when the clown whose cynicism sees all as fools becomes king, freedom collapses and terror reigns. King Lear asks whether we can redeem the human condition when we face the consequences of our own foolishness.

In November and December, we present She Se Puede (A Chorus of Huertas), a world premiere by Lisa Ramirez about Dolores Huerta and her lifelong fight for labor rights. This theatrical, form-defying, vibrant portrait of perseverance and collective action explores freedom won through solidarity.

Throughout this season, as we interrogate freedom across traditions and worlds, there remains theater itself.

As a theater artist, I believe the ultimate expression of freedom is the ability to play, to imagine, to explore, and to create. We struggle, protest, suffer, and strive so that our children might play. So that we might play with our children. So that we might play, however seriously, with ideas, words, structures, and ways to better our world.

Vaclav Havel reminds us that we are free where we feel most alive, where we burn with passion. We feel most alive in the throes of serious play, where we lose ourselves not in isolation but in one another, where interdependence replaces independence, and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

If play is the fullest expression of freedom, then theater allows us to play together, in public, as one body, and re-imagine our world.

There is so much to do right now. It is hard to know where to begin. But practicing freedom helps ensure that what is happening does not become normalized and that we do not become numb.

We remain free by asserting our freedom. We assert it by continuing to play, even in the face of those who would strip it away.

Come play with us.

Keep the fire burning.

We are, as always, because of you.

Michael Socrates Moran
Executive Artistic Director
Oakland Theater Project

2026 SEASON SUBSCRIPTION PACKAGES

Season subscriptions with the remaining 6 plays in the 2026 Season are now available alongside the flexible 3-play and 2-play packages. Enjoy the cost-savings and flexible benefits of being a subscriber!

3-Play Priority Subscription
(Reserved seating)
$155

3-Play General Admission Subscription
(Seating assigned upon arrival)
$90

Plus, Ticket Packages are Flexible!
As a subscriber, you have the benefit of moving your tickets as many times as needed!

2026 SEASON SHOWS

In a country built on the promise of liberty, what drives someone to try to kill the person who represents that promise?

Stephen Sondheim’s dark, razor-sharp musical presents a lineup of figures from American history who assassinated, or attempted to assassinate, American presidents.

This daring one-person staging, directed by Weston Scott, features Adam KuveNiemann (Ironbound, Exodus to Eden) as the solo performer portraying every character in this famed musical.

This one-of-a-kind production reveals how an epidemic of white male isolation cascading across the country can lead to violence. Here, every gunman, dreamer, outcast, and would-be revolutionary exists within a single alienated individual. As KuveNiemann moves through history’s most infamous attempts on presidential power, we reckon with how a nation that confuses freedom with independence can unravel itself through violence.

Assassins plays at Oakland Theater Project from March 20 – April 5.

Following the death of her second husband, Bernarda Alba imposes an eight-year mourning period on her household—and all five of her daughters.

Under the matriarch’s iron grip, freedom is a hunger: a pulse beneath floorboards, a body straining against lace and grief.

Featuring OTP Co-Artistic Director Lisa Ramirez in the title role, Chay Yew’s powerful adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s drama merges dance and drama to make visible what repression tries to crush: desire, rebellion, and the human right to self-determination. In a house sealed against the world, freedom claws at the walls — until something breaks.

The House of Bernarda Alba plays from May 22 – June 7.

PERFORMANCE VENUE: To Be Announced

Following 2023’s production of Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, OTP returns to the category-defying work of Taylor Mac with The Fre, in which a lone Hero searches for order in a society that worships impulse.

Part mud-riot, part rave, The Fre is a queer, all-ages play that stages polarization inside a literal ball pit, pulling the audience into a world where freedom looks like chaos, conformity hides inside collective joy, and language dissolves into play.

The result is both liberation and collapse — a muddy reminder that freedom can unite us, but it can just as easily devour us.

Raucous, raunchy, and unexpectedly tender, The Fre explores freedom across class and tribal lines, reminding us that connection, play, and solidarity may be the only way out.

Don’t miss this wild and generous work from a contemporary genius of the American theater, directed by Mylo Cardona.

The Fre plays at Oakland Theater Project from June 18 – 28.

A charismatic young drifter arrives in a small community shaped by prejudice and moral control. His presence awakens desires for love, justice, and self-determination — and sparks devastating consequences.

Born of the Southern Gothic but urgently national, Tennessee Williams re-imagines the myth of Orpheus and Euridice as a fever dream of America — one where the promise of freedom is received not as a refuge, but as a threat.

Will Detlefsen (Confirmation, Machinalia) directs.

Orpheus Descending plays at Oakland Theater Project from August 7 – 23.

In the twilight of his rule, a king sets out to divide the kingdom among his three daughters. But in mistaking flattery for love, Lear’s choices usher in a new reign of domination, cruelty, and collapse.

Stripped of title, authority, and comfort, Lear is left with nothing but his humanity.

Shakespeare’s timeless tragedy examines a man who mistakes his position for his identity, and finds himself in a new world — one in which kings are fools, fools are wise, and the exiled become one another’s unlikely saviors.

Written centuries ago, Shakespeare’s devastating examination of power asks whether freedom is possible in a world where control reigns — and why truth, care for the powerless, and dignity demand such risk.

King Lear, directed by Michael Socrates Moran, plays from October 9 – 18.

PERFORMANCE VENUE: To Be Announced

In Lisa Ramirez’s newest play, “Sí, se puede” becomes She Se Puede (A Chorus of Huertas) — a world premiere about Dolores Huerta and her lifelong fight for labor rights and true freedom.

This vibrant theatrical portrait, directed by Karina Gutiérrez, explores how Huerta’s perseverance, collective vision, and radical hope remain urgently necessary today — and examines freedom not as a gift, but as something organized, demanded, and won.

Here, the fight for dignity is the fight for freedom, carried forward by those who refuse silence.

She Se Puede (A Chorus of Huertas) plays at Oakland Theater Project from November 20 – December 6.

Performance Location:

2026 Season performances will take place at Oakland Theater Project at 1501 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland CA 94612 unless otherwise noted.

For a map, public transit and parking information, click here.

Tickets for Individual Shows:

$10–70 online or by calling our Box Office at 510.646.1126
Pay-what-you-can at the door (limited number)

If you have any questions, email our Box Office at boxoffice@oaklandtheaterproject.org